A Hundred Pairs - A McRoll in REAL World Story
by Mari217
Summary: Catherine has some *sorting* to do and Steve's input is always welcome.


_Each and every story is a joy to write, and we always have a great time, but I had a __**lot **__of laughs with Sammy &amp; Ilna, over this story. Ladies, you are the bestest of the best. Thank you for … well … everything._

_REALMcRollers &amp; readers, rest assured the REAL World isn't going anywhere. We promise they will __**ALWAYS **__be safe with us. Thank you for the words of love, gratitude and encouragement and your __**incredible **__reviews and support of our work. We have the best readers in the __world__! REAL McRollers ROCK!_

_Hugs, Mari_

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**A Hundred Pairs**

**McGarrett/Rollins residence  
9:00 p.m.**

Steve McGarrett snorted a laugh as he entered the bedroom. His girlfriend, clad only in a bra and boy-shorts, was sitting on their bed surrounded by what looked, at first glance, to be a hundred pairs of underwear.

A cursory examination had him re-estimating the number to seventy seven.

He didn't bother to count the bras.

Catherine looked up at his laugh. Her face was impassive, as though sitting in a literal sea of lingerie was an everyday occurrence. "Hi." She leaned forward into his kiss when he approached the bed.

"That's … a lot of underwear." Steve's chin tilt indicated the lace, cotton and silk items covering their bed in neat little piles.

"Yeah." Catherine shrugged. "I needed to purge."

"That what's going on?" Steve waved a hand. " 'Cause I don't see any room there for me to sleep_."_ His eyes crinkled with his half smile. "Let alone do anything else on our brand new mattress, that's breaking in nicely, by the way."

"There will be." She pushed her hair away from her face. "Like I said, I've gotta purge. I had to try some stuff on. Decide whether to keep it or toss it."

"Again, that's a lot of underwear, Rollins." The tiniest peek of tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth as he picked a pair of black lace bikinis off one of the piles. "You're keeping these, right? I liked these."

Catherine's grin was provocative. "You remember those, huh?"

He nodded slowly, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "I remember you wearing them in Atlantic City."

"Didn't wear 'em very long." Her eyes sparkled.

He grinned. "Just long enough."

"Those are new. That's the keep pile." She saw his eyes light in amusement as they roamed the piles of lingerie.

"These are from last weekend." He grabbed the lavender thong she'd worn under her new dress for a dinner out.

"Liked those, too, did ya?"

"Liked seein' you in 'em."

"Very good memory you have, Commander. But if we're gonna play 'remember when' here, you really will have no room to sleep tonight, because I'll never finish."

"Because you have a hundred pairs of underwear. Not that I'm complaining. Hell, the more I get to see you in, the better."

Catherine snatched the underwear from his hand with a smirk. "Says the man who has _how_ many pairs of underwear in his drawer?"

"Eleven." Steve stated without hesitation.

His knowing exactly how many perfectly regulation-rolled pairs were in the dresser made her love him just that much more. It was just so perfectly ... _Steve_.

"Which you replace in batches of four, precisely three times a year," Catherine teased.

"Exactly." Steve saw nothing wrong with the method that had worked for him since military boarding school. "And they'd be all the same color except for ..."

"The fact I bought you grey when we were stranded in New Jersey." She laughed. She'd strayed from Steve's normal khaki because her choices were grey or white and his habits were hardwired. Military issues weren't white. Dropping trou in-country wearing white could get you spotted. SEALs and Army Rangers were particularly conscious of that.

"Again, not complaining. I appreciated you buying them." He leaned down to kiss her. "But we were talking about _you_ having a hundred pairs." His smile was playful. "Each and every one I enjoy seeing you wear." The corner of his mouth rose again with his side-glance. "Or helping you remove, as the case may be."

She shook her head with a playful eye roll and continued to sort. "I bought a lot of new stuff when I retired. Now it's all wearing out at once. I needed to replace it."

After years of being locked into the choices allowed by regulations, Catherine had been happy to choose a variety of cute, sporty boy shorts in bright colors for work. Her growing collection of non-work undies included a variety of bikinis ranging from flirty to smolderingly sexy as well as several lacy, silky and barely there thongs.

"For so many years, I was stuck in boring stuff while on duty."

"I never thought so." Steve moved a heap of colorful material aside and sat next to her.

"Because I was usually prepared when I was going to see you. Or you were gonna _see_ me." Her laughter tinkled like wind chimes through the room.

"Not always. Sometimes I surprised you." He grinned proudly.

"You did." She angled closer and kissed his cheek. She could never resist that expression. "And when you did, you didn't have time to notice _what_ I was wearing, since as a general rule, we were naked in ten seconds flat." She chuckled.

"I _always_ noticed, Catherine. I just ... happened to be focusing on a common goal."

"Always mission oriented, McGarrett." She poked his stomach gently, loving the way his fingers lingered when his hand snatched hers.

"Absolutely." His eyes danced with mirth. "So this is all going?" Steve looked at a bag on the floor.

"A lot of it, yeah."

"So you're, what? Going commando from now on? Cause that will _definitely_ be a huge problem at work."

"Really? You don't say." Catherine raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I'll never be able to concentrate again." He brushed her shoulder and toyed with her bra strap.

"Smart ass." She gave him a playful shove. "I just bought new stuff."

He allowed himself to fall back against the pillows at her push. "I see that. A hundred more pairs?" Steve eyed the three Victoria's Secret shopping bags on the bedside chair.

"I may have gotten carried away." Catherine's shrug was unapologetic.

"You get anything _purple_?" His eyebrow lifted as he gave her a suggestive glance, not moving from his semi-prone position.

"Maaaaybe." She drew out the word, thinking he looked irresistible. "I'm still a little excited to be able to wear whatever I want. I didn't have to get anything beige and boring."

Steve pushed up on his elbows. "What, exactly, is your definition of boring? Because you in nothing but underwear is _always_ a win in my book. Actually, the only thing better than you half naked?" His eyes ran over her underwear-clad body as he said, "Is you totally naked." He reached for her hand and tugged her down on top of him. "So, about the purple …"

"You'll see it all, eventually." Catherine's lips were millimeters from his, and she placed a quick peck on them before moving to trail along his jaw and back to his mouth for a series of slow, soft kisses.

" 'Cause that's one fashion show I'd sit through." He slipped an arm around her waist and held her close.

"You'd never make it." She chuckled against his mouth.

"Well, we'd need ... breaks ... obviously."

"Ah ... to eat and sleep?"

"That too. Because you know how those all day events go."

"Definitely." Her heart swelled at how relaxed and happy he looked; something she was seeing more and more lately. She kissed him softly for a few minutes, just enjoying the feel of lying there with him, his lips under hers. Of simply being home, with nowhere else they had to be.

Finally, Catherine pulled back slightly as their kisses began to intensify. "I gotta finish here. If we keep this up, I'm gonna have to wash these all over again ..." She chuckled.

"Hmmm,how about if I promise_ I'll _run the washing machine _afterwards _... " Steve grinned and ran a hand over her back before returning it to rest on her butt.

"_You'll_ fall asleep, _afterwards_... right on top of my carefully sorted _keep _and _toss _piles." Catherine clucked her tongue with an amused look and sat up, tugging his hand until he did, too. "Gimme ten minutes to finish here and ... I'll give you a preview of one of the new purchases."

"Hmm." Steve's grin changed from amused to lascivious, but instead of moving to get up, he pulled her closer and murmured, "That's definitely worth considering."

She chuckled and ran a finger along his jaw. "One of the _purple_ ones ..." she sing-songed; at which point Steve stood and began stripping off his clothes.

"You're on, Lieutenant. Sort your heart out. I'll just ..." The corner of his mouth lifted as he continued, "be sitting right here, all ready to … observe."

Clad in his boxers, he was moving the bags from the bedside chair when he stopped and smiled again. "Wait, did you say 'purple ones' . . . as in more than one?"

"There are several." She tossed over her shoulder while adding two piles of lingerie to the bag on the floor and gathering the rest to fold.

A few minutes later, Catherine had neatly folded and put away every piece of lingerie she'd decided to keep.

When she got close enough to Steve to pick up the bags with her new lingerie, he reached out and snagged her around the waist, eliciting a yelp of laughter as he pulled her into his lap.

"I've been waiting a really, really long time, Lieutenant," he said into her hair as he nuzzled her neck and splayed his hands across her back.

"You've been waiting exactly six minutes." She tapped a finger against his chest.

"While you _regulation folded_ fifty four pairs of underwear and fourteen bras ..."

Catherine stood, lacing their fingers so he'd rise along with her. "Because I have more I need to fit in that drawer." She waved a hand, saying, "Wanna give me a minute to change?" as her eyes slid down his body and back up to his face with a smirk. " 'Cause I have a feeling if you watch, the fashion show part is gonna last about fifteen seconds."

Steve laughed. "Tell you what." He wrapped his arms around her and whispered, letting his lips brush her ear as he pressed against her. "You can save the purple items for tomorrow ..." He grinned at the noise she made when his tongue traced her earlobe. "Remember what I said about you in underwear?"

"Mmmm, what?" Catherine was quickly losing her train of thought.

"Only thing better than seeing you in it, is ... " Catherine's bra hit the floor. "Seeing you out of it."

"That so?" She toyed with the waistband of his boxers as she walked them toward the bed.

Steve kissed along her neck to her lips, speaking against her skin. "That," he breathed into her mouth, "is definitely," he deepened the kiss, "so."

Catherine's light shove landed Steve on their bed and she crawled up over him. "Right back at ya," she said as she tugged at his boxers and the fashion show was forgotten.

* * *

**Later**

"_You_ distracted me." Catherine opened her eyes and spoke sleepily. "I never put my new stuff away." She was dragging her fingers up and down his v-line.

"Keep doing that, and you never will." His breath hitched. "Leave 'em til morning."

She kissed his collarbone and smiled. "I wanna make sure it'll fit. Unless you want to give up another drawer for me," she teased.

Steve stilled her hand and pulled it up to kiss her knuckles. "I remember you having a duffle here, then half a drawer," he joked but the look behind the hazel eyes was serious.

"Then you kept suggesting I move more and more stuff in." She smiled, "You remember telling me how you knew it was the perfect decision that day you came home and I had washed the curtains?"

When she felt Steve nod, she continued, "I knew exactly when this place felt like home to you again; that we'd be staying here, in this house, permanently. It was the day _I _came home and you'd emptied half the closet and the dressers for me."

She was grinning but her eyes held Steve's. "It also spoke louder than words, 'cause you gave me the top drawers. Now, _that's_ love."

He'd slipped a hand into her hair and was gently running his thumb along the nape of her neck. "I wasn't sure about us staying here until you were stationed at Pearl. When you told me about the permanent duty station, I knew we'd move in together officially, but I figured we'd find another place. But you were staying here all the time by then, and suddenly this just _became _home." He kissed her and she sighed happily as he said, "Our home."

"Thank you." Her tone was drowsy. "I love you."

"Love you." Steve rested their entwined hands on his stomach and kissed her hair as she settled her head over his heart.

"Cath?" His voice was low and sleepy a minute later.

"Hmmm?'

"I'd give you the whole dresser."

Her gentle kiss on his chest was the last thing he felt before he joined her in sleep with her soft chuckle ringing in his ears.

.

_End - thanks for reading_

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